July 18, 2022 — Coastal communities in the tropics that rely heavily on both agriculture and fisheries are most vulnerable to the losses caused by high global carbon emissions, a new study says.
It looked at coastal communities in five countries within the Indo-Pacific region and found that most may face significant losses of agricultural and fisheries products — two key food sources — simultaneously in the event of the worst-case impacts of climate change. These potential losses may be coupled with other drivers of change, such as overfishing or soil erosion, which have already caused a decline in productivity, according to the study published July 5 in the journal Nature Communications. When looked at separately, the potential losses for the fisheries sector would be greater than for agriculture, the research showed.
But if carbon emissions can be effectively managed to a minimum, the study’s authors said, fewer communities would experience losses in both the agriculture and fisheries sectors.
The authors called on the governments of the countries examined in the study — Indonesia, Madagascar, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines and Tanzania — to improve and expand their climate mitigation efforts, and also to prepare alternative livelihood programs outside the fisheries and agriculture sectors.
But they also noted that alternative jobs often failed and were not a viable substitute for mitigating climate change for the around 6 million coral reef fishers globally as they can’t provide specific social and psychological satisfaction from working in agriculture or fisheries.